41–50 of 159 posts
Maybe we can keep using masks? Now that we already got used to them, we may reduce the effects of pollution with good filtering masks. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't address what's causing the pollution in the first place.
Now if the focus was upon air and water quality and addressing that, all the things that would need to happen just so happen to be those that tackle all environmental aspects of the climate and we would have more people on the same page addressing the issue over endless debate about it.
I'm sorry, but I'm totally over this type of nonsense. "Expert says" just signals bullshit to me at this point. Clickbait. I'm exhausted at this point.
I feel your pain, but let me ask you: how should we manage this as a society? The fact that air pollution kills massively is not 'new'. Should we stop reporting on it? Should we continue, but use other headlines? Because the solution can't be "keep chugging along as if nothing were". I'm heading up infosec in our company, and it's a similar "inconvenient truth" type of situation. My approach so far is to appeal to "c…
I think increasingly that will be the solution. The rational approach to threats is exhausting. People are going to go back to "ignore" and "panic" as the two outcomes, neither of which will be well grounded in actual risk measurement.
Another lockdown possibly ? /s
'Climate lockdowns' are already an established conspiracy theory among the nuttier end of society, I really think the news industry has a moral responsibility to avoid alarmism because of its inherently destabilising effect on society. Of course, alarmism is excellent at driving engagement and ad revenue so I might as well have asked for someone to write a program that solves the halting problem. I don't know how inv…
This is exactly what institutes of religion do, scaremongering with something invisible and evil..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few countries in Europe ban face coverings in public. Mainly driven by fear of people wearing burkas.
I'm only aware of a small subset of laws existing in Europe, but every single example of restrictions to face hiding I can think of predates Muslim presence by many decades. No, those are not driven by fear of people wearing burkas.
Meta-discussion, but I think "statistical deaths" - deaths where the causation has to be inferred, rather than being completely obviously monocausal - have been a big feature of quality of life improvement in the 19th and 20th century, but are now running into an informational problem. Namely that you have to believe the statistics in order for the process to work, but it's increasingly common to lie with statistics.…
Eg. if a person dies of lung cancer, then we roll a dice and say "theres a 1 in 6 chance that was due to pm2.5 emissions". If the dice rolls a 1, then we look around the town for sources of pm2.5, and we find that 1/6 comes from a candle factory. We roll another dice, and if that comes out with a 1, then we say "This factory emitted air pollution that killed this person".
Then we treat it in law exactly the same as if the person had walked by the factory and been decapitated by a piece of roof falling off. Ie. we let the family sue. We send inspectors to see if there is negligence involved, etc.